Master of Fine Arts thesis by Alexandra Thiesson

abstract: Research literature and popular press articles were reviewed to uncover the influences and viewer pleasures received from watching reality television. A close semiotic analysis of the reality television program, Teen Mom, was conducted. The semiotic analysis looked at the characters, the structure of the show, and the show's use of graphics and audio to understand the show's influences on viewers. An analysis of the Teen Mom website and online forum was also conducted. Seventy-one viewer posts and 403 viewer responses were analyzed to uncover viewer reactions to the show. The results were significant in three ways. First, the producers of the show claim the show is meant to educate viewers on the effects of teen pregnancy. The analysis found that while the show sends educational messages, it also contradicts itself by glamorizing teen pregnancy. Second, the analysis of the online forum revealed the formation of close online communities among Teen Mom viewers. Third, the website analysis provided evidence of viewer pleasure resulting from voyeuristic and social comparison tendencies. It is plausible that Teen Mom viewers engage with the show for the opportunity to observe parts of other people's lives they would not normally be permitted to see. At the same time, viewers evaluate themselves in comparison to the Teen Mom cast members. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Communication Studies 2012

The present work is based on the research and design of a mobile AR experiment performed in the context of the emerging interdisciplinary fields of digital heritage and experience design. In an attempt to find a method to support the justification and discovery of elements that can influence the user towards the fulfilment of an objective in a heritage experience, my experimental research reveals that a combination of play moments including elements of embodiment and sensuousness in mobile AR are most suitable to convey a story. Determining suitable gameplay and game mechanics requires an appropriate setting and context for a user’s encounter with digital heritage. My research outlines a design methodology to reveal how the aesthetics of mobile AR technology can be designed to support critical user experiences through play and discovery. / Designing Digital Heritage. Seeing Secrets

This dissertation examines how commercially successful military-themed video games produced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are crafted, marketed, and played with the goal of understanding the interlocking technological, cultural, and social practices that contribute to their interactive pleasures. The systematic inquiry into the production and experience of media pleasure carries with it vexing questions about how such affect is created and how it is situated within broader cultural fields. This interdisciplinary project accordingly utilizes multiple methods including close textual readings of seminal games, a critical discourse analysis of marketing materials, and an ethnography and focus group of a war gaming fan community to track how these sites of practice give post-9/11 military-themed gameplay its distinctive experiential character and cultural import. The case studies examined herein reveal that the affective dimensions of militarized gameplay are intimately linked to the political and cultural forces undergirding their production, marketing, and reception, and that the games industry mobilizes anxieties about terrorism to entice gamers into virtually striking back against foreign aggressors. / text

Poptimism is a school of contemporary popular music criticism characterized by its rejection of the notion of the “guilty pleasure” and traditions within rock journalism called “rockism.” Through an examination of poptimist writing, particularly Carl Wilson’s “Céline project” (which resulted in a book, Céline Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste) and material on musician Stephin Merritt’s comments at the Experience Music Project Pop Conference in 2006, trends emerge: efforts at combating elitism and promoting populism are belied by practices associated with high levels of cultural capital. These tendencies are examined from three angles. First, following Johan Fornäs, poptimist attitudes toward authenticity and reflexivity are considered. In their treatment of musical texts, poptimists reject rockist notions of authenticity while failing to account for consumers’ need for genuineness. Their grasp of reflexivity is greater when it comes to reception; Wilson’s project, an exercise in self-scrutiny for elitist bias via an attempt to appreciate the music of Céline Dion, shows the significance of reflexivity for poptimism. Second, poptimists’ approach to identity and difference is considered. Commentary on Merritt, who was accused of racism due to his admitted dislike of certain African-American artists and genres, is typical: oversimplified models of hegemony undermine deep concern about identity politics. Poptimists’ advocacy of omnivorous consumption as an anti-elitist strategy is flawed: using intellectual approaches and spurning the middlebrow are practices associated with high cultural capital. This strategy seems to lead to co-optation rather than real change. Third, poptimism’s relationship to value and emotion is analyzed. Poptimists have doubts about value judgments given traditional aesthetics’ hierarchical baggage, yet value judgments are critics’ raison d’être. Poptimism’s rejection of guilty pleasure and Wilson’s “guilty displeasure” concept link aesthetics to affect. Poptimists approach emotion inconsistently, embracing it when convenient but subjecting it to doubt and intellectualization when it seems to support elitism. Like many poptimist strategies, populist ideas motivate this approach, but it emulates hegemonic traditions. / text

Étudier les plaisirs féminins dans la littérature française de la Renaissance, c’est d’abord faire le constat d’une pluralité de représentations qui se regroupent autour d’un même enjeu, celui de l’honnêteté. En raison d’une forte tradition misogyne, il est en effet difficile pour une femme de concilier cet impératif social avec le plaisir. Les textes que nous étudions (récit, poésie, littérature d’idées) sont toutefois portés par une dynamique entre voix féminines et voix masculines, qui contribue à faire émerger un discours nouveau sur le plaisir féminin que nous nous proposons d’étudier. La première partie étudie les plaisirs dans l’espace conjugal. Celui-ci fait de la volupté féminine, dans la relation entre époux et dans l’adultère, à la fois une nécessité et une déviance. La deuxième partie s’attache à l’espace social et interroge les plaisirs de cour : les échanges amoureux influencés par l’amour courtois, le néo-platonisme et le pétrarquisme, et les divertissements collectifs, de la danse à la conversation. La troisième partie, consacrée à l’espace de soi, se dégage de la morale sociale dont les deux premières parties sont tributaires pour proposer une réflexion sur le plaisir comme accomplissement de soi dans la maternité, le savoir, la spiritualité et l’écriture. / The study of feminine pleasures in the sixteenth-century French literature leads to a multiplicity of representations. All of them coincide with the idea of honesty. Because of a strong misogynist ideology, women could hardly reconcile these social and moral requirements with the notion of pleasure. Nevertheless, the texts studied in this thesis (narratives, poems, essays and treatises) show a dynamic between feminine and masculine voices that gives way to new discourses on pleasure. The first part focuses on pleasure within marriage. Be it within their relationship with their spouses or in adultery, feminine sensual pleasure was considered both an honest need and a déviance. The second part deals with social pleasures: public amusements (from dance to conversations) as well as encounters between lovers, which were influenced by amour courtois, neoplatonism, and, petrarquism. The third part, dedicated to the self, breaks away from the social morals attached to the first two parts in order to study pleasure as self-accomplishment through motherhood, knowledge, spirituality and writing.

La présente recherche porte sur l’histoire des émotions positives et de leurs représentations en Grèce archaïque. L’histoire des émotions, qui a pu bénéficier d’un changement de paradigme ayant mis en évidence le lien entre émotions et cognition, se fonde sur l’hypothèse que le sens des scénarios affectifs varie selon les contextes historiques et culturels. L’objectif était ainsi de dégager le sens prêté aux émotions positives, d’Homère à Hérodote, à partir des témoignages disponibles. Le type d’analyse mis en œuvre est à la fois sémantique et historique, mais il s’appuie également sur les ressources de l’anthropologie et de la psychologie. Trois dossiers principaux jalonnent cette exploration : l’épopée homérique, la poésie archaïque à l’époque de l’émergence des cités et les nouvelles formes de la sagesse, religieuse et philosophique. Comment les émotions positives se définissent-elles dans ce cadre ? Leur forme et leurs fonctions se transforment-elles ? Quel usage en fait-on et quel rôle leur prête-t-on dans la cité ou, plus précisément, au banquet ? Quel discours suscitent-elles, du point de vue éthique, politique ou philosophique ? À partir d’une distinction sémantique fondamentale, qui paraît structurer le champ lexical du plaisir et de la joie, les nouvelles représentations des émotions positives sont envisagées en lien avec les bouleversements sociaux, politiques et religieux ayant affecté l’époque archaïque. / The present research regards the history of positive emotions and their representations in archaic Greece. The history of emotions, benefiting from a new trend, which underlined the relations between emotions and cognition, is based on the hypothesis that the sense of the affective episodes depends on the historical and cultural contexts. Consequently, the aim was to unveil the positive emotions’ meaning, from Homer to Herodotus, using the available evidence. The type of analysis that was used is at the same time semantic and historical, but it rests, as well, upon anthropology and psychology. Three main fields have been looked through for this study: the Homeric epic, the archaic poetry from the time of the first poleis and the new forms of wisdom, religious or philosophical. How these positive emotions have been defined? Were their form and functions subject to change? Which role is given to them in the polis or at the banquet? Which type of discourse have they provoked, at the ethical, political or philosophical levels? Beginning with a semantic dichotomy, that seems important in the lexical field, the new representations of the positive emotions are considered in close relationship with the social, political and religious changes of the archaic period.

8343511\u / 8343512\u

Mobiltelefoner har utvecklats i snabb takt över åren, från ett nytt koncept till en vardaglig självklarhet för många i bägge personlig och professional fattning. Efter smartphonens myntning i 1994 med IBM Simon Personal Communicator har mobiltelefonen evolveras i många olika riktningar. 2013 kom den först smartphonen med välvd skärm, Samsung Galaxy Round, vilket påbörjande en ny trend av böjda smartphones. Denna studie undersöker användaracceptans av den senaste typen av välvd skärm, sidoböjning, utifrån ett perspektiv av mänskliga nöjen. Studien föreslår att innovationen av sidoböjning inte avnjuts pragmatiskt utan idealistiskt, med fokus på adoptörens ideologiska och sociala begär. Innovationens framtid och utspridning utöver samhället slutdras som osäkert, med förslag på framtida forskning att vidareutveckla ämnets kunskapsbas. / Mobile phones have developed rapidly over the years, from a novel concept to an typical day certainty for many in both personal and professional use. Following the advent of the smartphone in 1994 with the IBM Simon Personal Comunicator, the mobile phone has evolved in a number of directions. In 2013, the Samsung Galaxy Round was launched, the first smartphone featuring a curved display, sparking a new trend of curved-display smartphones. This study investigates the user acceptance of the latest type of curved displays, curved sides, from a perspective of human pleasures. The studie suggests the innovation of curved sides is not enjoyed pragmatically, but idealistically, with a focus on the adopter’s ideological and social desires. The future of the innovation and its diffusion throughout society is concluded to be uncertain, with suggestions of future research to further develop the subject’s base of knowledge.